KitKat gaining Android ground but most still prefer the taste of Jelly Beans

Android 4.4 KitKat has gained market share in April, now being installed on 8.5 per cent of Android devices globally. However, it has a long way to go in the operating system domination stakes as former releases of Jelly Bean (4.1 - 4.3) are still installed on a vast majority of Android phones and tablets - over 60 per cent of them, in fact.

The latest figures, taken in the seven days leading up to 1 May, also show that there are plenty of cheap as chips handsets out there still operating on a day to day basis using Android 2.3.3 to 2.3.7 Gingerbread. The years-old platform enjoys 16.2 per cent of Android OS market share, while Ice Cream Sandwich is still the primary system installed on 13.4 per cent of devices.

The data is garnered by Google through devices connecting to the Google Play store. However, as it requires the latest version of Google Play to be installed, devices on Froyo are no longer recognised, although an estimate of 1 per cent has been posted by the company based on previous states.

Latest figures on screen sizes and resolutions confirm the upward trend for larger and sharper displays. A majority of the screens have hdpi pixel densities (240dpi) and are of a "normal" size. But there is rapid growth in normal-sized xhdpi (320dpi) and xxhdpi (480dpi) screens - making up 33.4 per cent of the market when joined.